Organic synthetic materials made of epoxy, polyester, polypropylene and other polymers are widely used in composites such as fiber boards, glass fiber composites, sealants for marble and granite countertop surfaces, aircrafts, body armors etc. These resins are relatively expensive, have a high green house gas intensity and are flammable. The volatile organic compounds released by them during their use present a health hazard for a user.
Technologies exist for formulating inorganic mineral based resins but these are usually based on alkali metal aluminosilicates and alkali metal boroaluminosilicates. These technologies for the most part are limited to one type of formulation and do not always allow for the manufacture of resins with wide range of formulations, properties and uses.
Phosphate ceramics and ceramics that are made by acid-base reactions between phosphoric acid, or an acid-phosphate, and a metal oxide are generally known. The products disclosed in these patents are hard, and replicate properties of either cement or ceramic, or both.
Rapidly setting compositions such as phosphate ceramics heretofore have proven difficult to spray coat (and atomize) onto surfaces so as to provide a smooth, paint-like finish. For example, conventional hydraulic cements can be sputtered coated, but the sputtered coating cannot provide a smooth, paint-like finish as it difficult to obtain good mixing with a high viscosity, unsuspended matrix, and such coatings contain significant amounts of unreacted precursor materials that tend to result in a grainy surface texture. Also, mixing a conventional hydraulic cement for extended times in order to improve its homogeneity typically results in the mixture setting before or during spray coating. Using additional aggregates with the starting precursors in these conventional formulations exacerbates the problem of providing a smooth paint-like finish, especially if such aggregates are of a size greater than about 300 mesh. Thus, conventional hydraulic cements, have heretofore not been successfully formulated such that they are reliably atomizable.
Another problem, specific to phosphate ceramics, is that they are generally translucent after application and set. Using color aggregate in atomizible phosphate ceramics to provide color to these formulations poses challenges. Using too small a natural mineral aggregate (e.g., to avoid unwanted texture) in these formulations results in coatings that generally appear white or weakly colored and are therefore not acceptable even at greater than conventional loadings of the colorant. Using high loadings of solids and/or larger aggregates in these formulations are generally avoided for rheological difficulties and difficulty atomizing.
On the other hand, textured, atomizable phosphate ceramic coatings, using larger aggregates (including large aggregate colorants such as colored sand aggregates) have heretofore proven difficult to achieve, partly because the larger aggregates can clog the spray/atomizing equipment and the composition must be formulated such that it can hold the large aggregate particles, but at the same time set before the aggregate migrates, for example, down a vertical surface or overhead surface. Conventional, non-ceramic paints, in contrast, provide too thin a coating to hold large aggregate for texturing and highlighting, at least in part because they have too low a viscosity and because they take too long to set.